How has North Korea managed to make such astounding progress with its long-range missile programme over the last two years? Here, Michael Elleman shares the first solid evidence that North Korea has acquired a high-performance liquid-propellant engine from illicit networks in Russia and Ukraine. …read more Source: International Institute...

There is a strong sense of déjà vu in the late Northern summer of 2012. The worst droughts in living memory have devastated corn and soybean crops in the United States and Canada; and extreme heat is damaging wheat yields in the breadbaskets of Russia and Ukraine. With increasing volumes of grain diverted to meet …read more Source: Centre...

Doug Bandow President Donald Trump has put all of Asia and much of the world on edge. All week he’s gone mano-a-mano with Kim Jong-un, blustering like the frightened head of an international micro-state instead of the representative of the world’s most important and powerful nation. Who imagined that people around the globe would be...

Russia / Europe We are witnessing yet another flare-up in relations between Russia and Moldova: Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin (who is in charge of cooperation with Moldova in fact) has been declared persona non grata by Chisinau. The question is not even why that has happened but whether this strife may lead to other, more serious...

Originally produced on Aug. 7, 2017 for Mauldin Economics, LLC By George Friedman The new US sanctions against Russia overwhelmingly passed Congress. But in parts of Europe, they are far less popular. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel last week called them “more than problematic.” In diplomatese, that means the Germans oppose them. The...

CHINA China’s Wechat, Weibo And Baidu Under InvestigationBBCChina says it is investigating its largest social media platforms—Weibo, WeChat and Baidu Tieba—for alleged violations of cyber security laws. The Cyberspace Administration said people had been using the three platforms to spread terror-related material, rumors and obscenities. The...

By Jacob L. Shapiro North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela are all countries that pose very real but different kinds of problems for the United States. These countries have made headlines in the U.S. in recent days, and we will unpack them each separately. Collectively, they indicate that the U.S. has spread itself thin and has been unable to...

Three and a half years after shots fired from inside the Khmelnytsky SBU [Security Service] office at Maidan activists killed 73-year-old Ludmila Sheremet and seriously injured others, the investigation appears to have been deliberately sabotaged …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection...